Working Life

How is the recent NYC transit strike like a dispute in Ireland over Latvian workers being hired to work on ferries? In both instances, workers are being pitted against each other in the name of cutting costs and boosting profits. In the transit strike, the workers were fighting to keep their pensions and health care; […]

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It never ceases to amaze me how powerful the health care industry lobby is. Otherwise, how do you explain the 45 million uninsured Americans, the millions more under-insured and the crazy 1.8 trillion dollars we spend on health care (15 percent of GDP)–and still we have no national health insurance? This is a scandal. In […]

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As we’ve discussed here for many months, the pension system in the country is under attack. Either by running into bankruptcy or converting defined benefit plans to take-a-gamble 401(k)’s or demanding pension givebacks in contract negotiations (as was the case in the NYC transit strike), employers are dismantling the pension system. The message today is […]

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That might be a good title for a B-movie…but it’s actually the title of a column today by Ben Stein in The New York Times Sunday Business section. For my tastes, Stein is often a bit too much of a cheerleader for the free market. But, in this column, he joins in the chorus we […]

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Back in October, the media was awash in reports, expressed in stunned amazement, that huge throngs of working Americans were rushing to the courthouse to file for bankrupcty to escape the new rules that would take effect on October 17th. It shouldn’t have been surprising–people are spending 1.22 for every dollar they earn and their […]

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I’m not a deficit hawk. The real question is: what are the things you do to move the country forward which justify running a deficit? Giving more tax breaks to the top one percent of the people is not what I would call wise economic planning. The House just passed a bill that cuts taxes […]

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So, the president apparently is getting a little lift in his popularity from the “improving” economy. If I was him, I wouldn’t be breaking out in celebration quite yet. This is just a very small snapshot in time and does not reflect the economic dangers facing many people. I gather part of the slight change […]

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We’ve been talking a lot here about the demise of the private defined benefit pension system–the system that actually gives a worker, who has labored away for 20 plus years at a company, a regular amount of money she or he can count each month, as opposed to worrying about making it in the casino…that […]

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You remember the old refrain that had been adapted over time that goes roughly like this: you didn’t speak up when they came after so-and-so and, then, when they came after you, there was no one to speak up for you. Well, today, it’s the Verizon managers. The data transmission company (Memo to New York […]

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For obvious reasons, the president is trying to shift attention away from the war, which is a disaster. The Administration’s approach is to get people talking about the economy, which it thinks it can claim goods news: energy prices have come down a bit and about 215,000 jobs were added in November. Well, I suppose […]

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